


No Justice, No Peace

by which_chartreuse



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Netflix Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Cohabitation, Current Events, F/M, Gen, New Relationship, Newly established relationship, Quarantined Together, Wash Your Hands, friendships, global pandemic 2020, other heroes implied, quarantine cohabitation, romance is hard enough when the world isn't on fire, social distancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24637132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/which_chartreuse/pseuds/which_chartreuse
Summary: I haven't finished all of the Marvel Netflix series, and I only read some of the comics, so there may be canon discrepancies I am unaware of. This was written in moments of needed reprieve, and hasn't been edited with my usual level of scrutiny. Please excuse any errors/typos.Thank you for reading.
Relationships: Frank Castle & Jessica Jones, Frank Castle/Karen Page, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	No Justice, No Peace

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't finished all of the Marvel Netflix series, and I only read some of the comics, so there may be canon discrepancies I am unaware of. This was written in moments of needed reprieve, and hasn't been edited with my usual level of scrutiny. Please excuse any errors/typos.  
> Thank you for reading.

“Frank?” Karen's voice cracks with sleep, or worry, or irritation, or maybe just curiosity, but Frank isn't looking at her in this moment, so he can't be one-hundred percent sure. It's been months, now, but he's still learning the nuances of her voice. He knows that if he looks at her, though, if she sees what he's doing, she's going to try to talk him into taking her with him.

“Go back to sleep,” he calls over his shoulder, hoping the gravel in his voice is low enough, smooth enough.

Of course it isn't. Karen is a fucking smart woman, and she knows him too well.

“Frank, where are you going?” He hears her padding toward him, her bare feet sticking to the floor in the heat the window A/C unit can't quite cut through.

He doesn't answer. Just keeps packing protein and granola bars, water bottles, and first aid supplies into the various compartments of the most low-profile of his backpacks. Slender fingers curl around his shoulder and Frank knows an argument of one form or another is imminent.

“Frank.” Karen's voice isn't clouded with sleep or quiet with curiosity anymore. It's sharp, and sliding into his chest like shrapnel between his ribs.

“I'm gonna hold the lines,” he says, defensively, like it might preemptively deflect the storm that is Karen Page.

The fingers that have slid from his shoulder tighten around his forearm. “I'm coming with you.”

Frank sighs.

So, it is going to be that argument.

“No, Karen.”

“Yes, Frank.”

“Karen...” He finally looks her in the face. Sees the determination and resolve in those vivid blue eyes.

“I'm just as white as you are. I can put myself between a Black kid and a cop just as easily. Don't tell me it isn't safe, because that's exactly the point.” She sounds angry, and of course she does. This is exactly the kind of injustice that made Karen Page _Karen Page_. “I can handle myself. I can be an ally and a first person witness.”

“That isn't the point,” Frank starts, but he's already messed up, and it's hard to look her in the eyes and get the right words out. Get out the words that will make her understand that she can do good work without following him into the fray.

“I mean, you're right, of course,” he stumbles. “That is the point. But, I-” _god-fucking-dammit, she's so hard to deny_ “I know myself. If something happened to you... _Fuck._ \- What am I even saying?”

How can he go from calm and collected to a stammering mess so fast? When had Karen burrowed this deep? How does he do this without sounding like another racist asshole?

Her eyes go soft, and so do her fingers around his arms.

“It's okay,” Karen says, gentle. “Take your time. The words don't have to be perfect.”

Frank sighs, blowing a steady stream of hot air out through his nose, pausing, then drawing in a deep breath.

“Karen, if you go out there with me, I am gonna be distracted. I know you don't want me to worry about you, but that _is_ what I'd be doing. And that isn't the point right now. I can help protect the people, but I can't do a good job of it if I'm worried about you. Those bastards know who you are, and half of them wouldn't even need the excuse of a riot to try to shut you up...”

Frank's hands ball into fists, clenching and releasing as he speaks, but his breathing stays calm, and Karen's fingers brush soothingly against his wrist.

There's a moment of hesitation, and Karen looks away as she takes her own steadying breath.

“Okay,” she says, and it about knocks Frank on his heels.

“Okay?” he questions, now grabbing for her hand.

“Yes, Frank.” She takes another deep breath. “You're right. Cops are [bastards](https://link.medium.com/uiQWVwgF76?fbclid=IwAR1oOL7LmqrQpkIS_633R_xsL0H2icwlRzJ0kVEnajGRDSmCboStMWBUb3o). And there are other things I can do to help. I know Ellison's already got boots on the ground. I can take stories as they're called in. And I can be a bail contact. You know how that works, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank affirms, squeezing Karen's hand a little tighter. “If we can't de-arrest, get their name, birthday, as much info as I can...” He glances at Karen under his eyebrows, looking for confirmation that he's got the details right.

Karen nods. “Then you send that to me on the secure messenger, and I'll coordinate with the [bail funds](https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory). Foggy's got a list of pro bono lawyers going already, too. There's a network. I was gonna go help him later, anyway... And I can listen to the scanners, tweet information...”

“Okay, yeah,” Frank says, relaxing his grip but still holding on to her. She smiles at him, a small, affectionate smile, and reaches up with her free hand.

“Good thing you haven't been cutting your hair,” she half-jokes, running her fingers through his loose curls. He's starting to silver at the temples, and she likes it on him. “If you look like one, the others won't trust you.”

He knows which 'ones' she's talking about, and that's why he's dressed the way he is. Well worn blue jeans, a plain t-shirt, and a plaid flannel left over from his construction days tied around his waist. No cargo pants, no bullet-proof vest, no cheap ball cap.

Karen's eyes roam over him, and Frank fights the fire her attention fans in him. He loves it, but _not now_.

“I don't know about the shoes, though,” Karen says, staring down at his reinforced military-style boots. “I've been reading that boots are another giveaway for undercover cops and agent provocateurs.”

Frank's eyes narrow as she glances back up at him, and he realizes she was probably reading social media threads about the protests on her phone for all those hours before she came to bed last night. He huffs another sigh and nods. Karen slips from his grip and pads back into the bedroom, and Frank tugs off the combat boots. She returns with his running shoes in one hand and his 'dressier' suede boots in the other.

“Traction? Or ankle support?” she asks.

“Traction,” Frank decides, reaching for the sneakers.

While Frank ties on the grippy cross-trainers, Karen nudges around in his backpack then continues loading its compartments with snacks, water, and the extra supplies from the previously overflowing first-aid kit Frank's had stashed in her apartment for the last few years. She goes to the laundry basket still sitting out on the sofa and pulls several of the bandanas they've been using as makeshift masks, folds them up, and tucks them into the little outermost pocket of the pack with his leather workman's gloves.

She's patting at the pack's sides and shoving her hand all the way to the bottom of the 'camel' water compartment when Frank rejoins her.

“There aren't any weapons. No guns, no knives. I won't give them an excuse,” Frank says. “Only blades are on the bandage scissors in the grey kit.”

“Good,” Karen replies, though she's looking uncomfortable all of a sudden.

“Hey,” Frank says, searching for her attention now that she's avoiding his gaze. He spent so much of the morning trying not to wake her, hoping to keep her at arm's length, but now that he's looking at her, he can't deny how deep she is inside his chest. How much he cares what she's feeling. He can't believe he thought he could slip out without talking to her first.

“Don't worry about me,” he says, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her into his chest. “I've seen so much worse than these bastards can dish out, and you know it, yeah? I can take that if it means protecting the people. So don't you dare worry about me.”

He can feel her nodding into his neck, his hands running up and down along her arm, her spine. Feels her lips press into the space behind his ear, where her fingers sometimes brush when they're alone together in bed, waiting for sleep.

“I know,” she says. “I just wish...-” She stops short.

“What?” Frank asks, taking a half step back so he can see her face again.

“You can't punish them,” Karen says, her voice low and flat, ice cold.

“No,” Frank agrees, understanding exactly what Karen is saying without her having to spell it out.

If Frank went out there as the Punisher, he'd very likely be undoing all the protestors' and organizers' and activists' work. The cops would absolutely use it as an excuse to retaliate even harder than they already had. As much as he'd like to send a few carefully placed bullets across the blue line, he cannot succumb to the blood-lust that even now is simmering deep inside him. He has to redirect that rage to shield the Black protesters from the blue mob, to help get the injured out of the fray.

“No,” Frank repeats. “Gotta do the work with our voices and our bodies. Not my fists.”

Karen's mouth is a grim line when she nods, but he kisses it anyway.

…

Karen watches Frank disappear around the corner from her apartment window before she returns to the bedroom. She pulls a few comfortable yet professional pieces from her closet, and packs them into the little gym duffel she hasn't used in months. She gathers her charging cables and laptops – one for _Bulletin_ work and one for NM&P work – and adds them to the bag. She triple checks the bail fund numbers on her phone, and the secure contacts for Frank and Curtis Hoyle, who Frank said has been working a medic tent.

She quickly showers, dresses in comfortable clothes, and turns the A/C unit in the window off. She isn't sure how long she'll be away, so there's no point in wasting the energy or the money.

Karen makes her way to Nelson, Murdock & Page, another pair of eyes above a face mask in an unsurprising sea of pedestrians. The hand-made signs and groups of chanting [protesters](https://colorofchange.org/) on street corners are fewer on the island of Manhattan than in Brooklyn, but she passes a few, and their numbers will grow day by day, she's sure.

Foggy meets her in the office above Nelson's Meats, and they set to work. Karen gets Matt's police scanner working, while Foggy makes his regular calls to the network of lawyers on stand-by to help represent protestors and file charges against police when protestors are injured, then checks in with the [bail fund](https://bailproject.org/). Karen manages to get Claire Temple on the phone for about sixty seconds, then texts the nurse the number for the legal defense group and the information she can pass on to patients who come in with protest-related injuries.

Finally, Karen calls Ellison. She's technically not a _Bulletin_ employee anymore, but Ellison still occasionally runs her pieces. Today he's argumentative at first, clearly agitated by the fever pitch of the protests and rightly enraged by the [police brutality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpXXUC623ow&feature=emb_logo) playing out in the streets of his city. He's still got something of a disappointed and overprotective fatherliness about him when it comes to Karen, but when she assures him that she's not going out into the crowds, he agrees to loop her into secure message chains with some of his reporters who are on the scene.

There's a short reprieve before the NM&P phones go live on the network's switchboard, and Theo brings up a couple of oversized sandwiches before heading out to the protests himself, pushing a handcart weighed down with bottled water and individually wrapped sandwiches, extra gloves and face masks from behind his own counter, and hand sanitizer.

Karen [eats](https://www.theokraproject.com/) quietly, and watches Foggy pick at the edge of his lettuce.

“Your hair's getting long again,” Karen says with a slight smile. “Marci must hate it.”

“Yeah,” Foggy manages to grin. “She keeps threatening to break quarantine and come cut it off herself. I suppose now she might actually do it...”

They finish there sandwiches at either end of the long conference table, and Karen wishes she could give her best friend a hug. It has to be enough that they're there together, though.

They have work to do.

…

It's hot, but not as hot as Afghanistan in full military gear. It's alternately loud and chaotic and loud and organized. But never as loud as the battlefields where Frank risked his life serving a system he no longer believes in.

Unsurprisingly, the chaos seems only to rise when the police push into the crowds. But even then, there are strong voices amongst the people that manage to keep a relative organization in the throng. Frank gets loud, sometimes, too, calling on the pockets of white faces behind a myriad colors of masks to join him as a shield when the cops start pushing in again. On the one hand, Frank is glad he can stand at the very front edge and hold back a cop decked out in more armor than Frank's worn in maybe his entire life with no more than a hard stare and his light skin. On the other, every time a cop backs up a half step, not because he can recognize the Punisher beneath the bandana and the longer hair, but because striking a white person would be bad optics, Frank's blood seethes a little hotter.

_Racism fucking confirmed._

Frank goes where he's needed throughout the afternoon, handing out water bottles and escorting people to the medic tents, attaching himself to a mixed group of [activist leaders](https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/about) and willing helpers. He gives out the numbers for the legal aid network and the [bail fund](https://www.lgbtqfund.org/) wherever he goes. He checks in with Curt from time to time, occasionally escorting groups of injured and exhausted protestors through the crowds to the transportation volunteers outside the protest lines.

Once, he locks eyes with a man he swears is Sam Wilson. The Punisher and the last Captain had had a tense understanding, but Frank hasn't had the opportunity to speak to the newly re-christened hero. Wilson tips his chin in recognition after a moment's scrutiny, then shifts back into the mass of bodies, chanting with the crowd as he goes.

As evening falls and the rumored curfew approaches, the people thin out a bit, but the cops get riled. Frank helps unarrest some of the protesters he's spent part of the day with as they try to get home.

The cops start [kettling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling#George_Floyd_protests,_2020) people, and it's harder and harder to keep the Punisher side of himself under control. Frank finds himself alongside a comparatively petite raven-haired woman pushing back against the blue lines when the batons start flying, and he watches her easily wrest the club from one cop's hand and send it end over end into a nearby tree top. If he were to guess, Frank would say this is the powered P.I. Karen has told him about, Jessica Jones.

“Ya gonna stare or ya gonna help?” the woman barks from beneath the grey scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth. Together with a larger group of white faces, they work to hold back the encroaching blue line so others can make it to a nearby building where the tenants are manning the front and back doors to keep people from being arrested and help get people home.

The chaos sets down roots as darkness falls over the city. Frank manages not to get arrested, and he and the Jones woman work their way along the lines of the “white shield” as violence brakes out in furious bursts.

…

Karen sleeps on the sofa in the space that passes for the law office's waiting room whenever she can steal an hour or two, and Foggy commandeers Theo's saggy break-room sofa downstairs when the phones are mostly quiet for a bit after the curfew lifts.

It's two days before Karen ventures back to the apartment, and the only messages she's had from Frank are arrested protester information.

The apartment is sweltering, and the little potted rose bush droops limply on the coffee table. It's clear Frank hasn't been there.

Karen bags her laundry and thoroughly scrubs herself in the shower while the window A/C works valiantly to banish the heat. She feels guilty as she pulls on one of Frank's clean t-shirts and unwraps another sandwich Theo sent home with her. She scrolls through Twitter and Instagram while she listens to the police scanner app, double-checking information before reposting updates on her own accounts. But the name 'Frank Castle' and the moniker of 'Punisher' don't appear in any headlines or sound over the radio.

She feels guilty for her minor discomforts and worry against the devastation of racism; guilty for the rest she's about to have in her own bed; guilty for not having the energy to do more. But she's doing _something_ , she reminds herself. She is _doing_ _the_ _work_ as the community coordinators and legal aid organizers keep reassuring them all in the update and check-in emails. And the movement doesn't need [her guilt or her apologies](https://insidethekandidish.wordpress.com/2020/05/30/dear-white-people-this-is-what-we-want-you-to-do/); it needs her strength and support.

…

Karen works the next day from home, then cycles back to the NM&P office for another two day stint of support work. The only messages that come through on the secure line from Frank are protester arrest related, but at least they indicate he hasn't been arrested himself; or, possibly worse, discovered.

…

Frank can handle [tear gas](https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/riotcontrol/factsheet.asp). He's trained for it. He doesn't like it – hell, no one ever _likes_ it – but he can handle it. What he has never been prepared for, though, is watching the chemical wreak havoc on [civilians](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/military-tear-gas-protesters-trnd/index.html). The guttural roar of the Punisher erupts from his throat, diverting a nearby string of people rushing away at the sound. A skinny girl with '[Black Lives Matter](https://blacklivesmatter.com/)' painted on her bare arms in yellow paint has collapsed, people rushing around and over her. Frank scoops her up and runs for the last medic tent he remembers clocking.

…

Rubber bullets. What a [deceptive name](https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/rubber-bullets-are-not-rubber.html). Talk about false fucking advertising. Frank watches a [journalist's](https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/police-are-attacking-journalists-at-protests-were-suing/) eye explode, and hurls a smoke bomb back across the blue line.

…

It's Sam Wilson who finally tells Frank to go home. Frank has been acting as shield while Jessica carries bruised and bleeding bodies to the medics, and the Captain is there beside Curt when they bring in a kid with a fractured arm and sprained ankle.

“How long since you slept?” Wilson asks while Curt insists on checking Frank's bruises.

“Few hours,” Frank grunts, and it's true. He has been stealing naps here and there.

“Okay, how long since you showered?” Wilson asks next.

“Few days,” Frank admits, letting Curt clean and wrap his split knuckles only because he isn't commenting on how they got that way.

“Go home, Fr-... Pete,” the Captain says, glancing between Curt and Frank for a second, before repeating his order. “Go home. There's still a pandemic on, and you're no help if you wear yourself too thin.”

“There's more of us out there,” he adds, voice low beneath his mask, but leaning in towards Frank's ear.

Captain America and the Punisher lock eyes for the second time, and Frank's pleasantly surprised by the reassurance he feels at the implication of Avengers on the people's side of the line.

“Go home, the both of you,” Wilson repeats, indicating Ms. Jones along with Frank this time, and ducks back out of the medic tent.

Frank and Jessica escort the boy with the broken arm to a transportation volunteer, exchange contact information, then go their separate ways.

…

A trash bag containing an empty backpack, Frank's clothes, and his shoes sits just inside the apartment door when Karen comes home on the sixth evening. She can hear the water running in the bathroom and releases a too long held breath, knowing that Frank is still here. She strips out of her own clothes, adding them to the pile, before scrubbing her arms and washing her face in the kitchen sink. She's leaning against the counter, eating from a carton of Nelson's potato salad, in her underwear when Frank wanders into the kitchen in clean sweats and a white t-shirt.

He looks exhausted, and his arms are bruised all over. His knuckles are wrapped, and the slight limp he usually hides is a bit more than slight right now. But he's here, looking just as angry as ever, which is oddly reassuring.

The anger goes out of his face at the sight of Karen, though. His expression relaxes and his eyes go soft, then hot as he looks her over in her state of undress. He takes another step toward her, but stops at just one.

“I wanna hold you so bad,” Frank says, and the gravel in his voice is like distant thunder.

Karen nods. “Me too,” she says.

They eye each other – blue eyes and brown eyes, bloodshot eyes, electric and stormy – and it's a good thing Frank turned the A/C back on as soon as he got in, because the heat goes [feverish](https://nowthisnews.com/news/heres-how-to-have-safe-sex-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic) between them, even at six-plus feet apart.

Karen sets the potato salad down, breaking the spell between them, all the unsaid things staying unsaid. She tells Frank there's a sandwich for him in the fridge, then takes the long way around the table to pass him and head for the shower herself.

It's still light out when Karen emerges – late sun of summer – but Frank is already sprawled crosswise on the bed. She knows the shower and their precautions with clothing and bags are no guarantee of safety, but they've both taken risks of exposure in the last week. There are more steps they can take to avoid potential spread when they go out again. Right now, though...

She crawls up the mattress and lies full length along his side. Frank's arms immediately wrap around her, a hand carding into her damp hair, massaging her scalp. Karen matches him, finding the smooth spot behind his ear, scratching gently at his stubble.

He squeezes her tighter for a moment, but winces and lets go before she'd like. Her eyes immediately find his, concern painted all over her face. He shakes his head to wave her off.

“I'm fine,” he says. “Just bruises. Sore.”

He rises to kiss her where she hovers over him.

“And tired,” he whispers against her lips.

Karen nods against him, then captures his mouth in another quick, but feverish, kiss. She can feel him trembling with the effort to hold himself up, and pushes him back into the pillows as she lays herself back down beside him.

Frank holds her, tucks her into the crook of his shoulder, rubbing circles into her arm, her side. Karen cradles his neck and the back of his skull with a slender hand.

She wants to tell him she loves him. She wants to ask him what he's seen. But they're both tired, and she knows he's going to go back out there before any of his bruises are healed.

And there's still work to do.

So she doesn't say anything, just feels the love she has for him and trusts that he feels it too. And they rest together. Because rest fuels resistance, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this a week+ ago, when a friend in Brooklyn was telling me about the protests. And at first I agonized over the wording and getting things right, and how it might be taken. There isn't really time for that now, though. Fear and hate have no place in fandom.  
> The important things are to keep learning, graciously accept correction when we're wrong, and keep going. Keep educating ourselves, keep learning, keep improving, keep LISTENING, keep fighting for justice. Keep fighting for equality, for equity, for humanity.  
> And so there's no confusion, what I am saying is: Black lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Black women matter. Black children matter. Black men matter. Black queer lives matter. Black _life_ matters. Black lives are worthy, beautiful, and needed.  
> No justice? No peace.  
> And wash your hands.


End file.
